Dulles Rail Boondoggle Exposes Flaws in Federal Transportation Policy

Among the 85 largest metropolitan areas in the country, the
Washington, D.C., region has the distinction of having the
seventh-worst traffic congestion in the nation, as measured by the
Texas Transportation Institute in its most recent annual report on
urban mobility.[1] This would not surprise anyone living in
the area: Along the region's major transportation corridors,
gridlock is a common occurrence throughout the week. Very little
road capacity has been added over the past several decades despite
large increases in the population, licensed drivers, jobs, and
businesses--not to mention the billions of dollars ineffectively
spent by a hodge-podge of overlapping government transportation
bureaucracies.

Having already squandered vast sums of tax dollars, many of
these same bureaucracies, along with their supporters in the
business and environmental communities, are now pushing
aggressively for the biggest boondoggle of them all: the Dulles
rail extension project, which would ultimately add 23 miles of
new rail line to link downtown Washington with the Dulles airport
in distant Loudoun County. Estimated to cost $5.1 billion, the new
rail line is strongly supported by the region's elected officials
and business community despite the project's own estimates that
show it would do little to relieve congestion, pollution, or energy
use in the corridor where it would operate, let alone in the region
as a whole. Congress and the Administration should deny the project
federal funding.

High Cost, Little to No Benefit

The new rail line would link with the Washington Metropolitan
Area Transit Authority (METRO), the existing rail system, at Falls
Church in suburban Virginia. Estimated to cost $3.4 billion
three years ago, it is now projected to cost $5.1 billion but would
likely clock in at somewhere between $7.5 billion and $10
billion if ultimately built.

The project's own projections reveal the lack of any benefit
that would justify its enormous cost:[2]

By the project's completion in 2025, traffic volumes on the ten
highway links in the corridor would be reduced by only 1.5 percent
compared to levels that would occur without the extension.

The negligible gain in traffic relief would be erased by 2027,
given projected traffic growth rates. In effect, $5.1 billion (in
current dollars) would be spent for two years of trivial traffic
relief.

The capital cost per new rider attracted to transit from a car
(daily rider annualized) exceeds $15,000. That is enough to lease
each new transit rider two BMW 328i convertibles for life and still
return a few thousand dollars to the taxpayer. By this measure, the
Dulles extension would be one of the most expensive new transit
projects ever conceived.

Net energy savings by 2025 (measured in energy saved per BTU as
car usage declines and transit usage rises) would be 0.5 percent
for the full Dulles project, and the Wiehle Avenue link (Phase I)
would actually increase energy usage.

While detailed analysis of Dulles rail's own projections
indicate little or no meaningful benefit in congestion relief, a
broader look at the region suggests that the massive investment
already made in rail transit has had little influence on commercial
development in the community despite claims to the contrary.
Indeed, Virginia's four most prosperous commercial and residential
areas--Tysons Corner, Reston, the Loudoun/Dulles tech corridor, and
McLean--have one important thing in common: None is served by the
existing rail transit system!

A Bureaucratic Nightmare

As voters in the area already know, a large part the
metropolitan area's congestion problem stems from the mismanagement
of the region's transportation system by a collection of
duplicative bureaucracies, which now includes three state
Departments of Transportation (DOT), one federal DOT, freelancing
members of the U.S. Congress and their staffs, a metropolitan
planning organization, a new regional transportation authority
recently empowered to raise taxes, a dozen or so counties and
cities, and a meddlesome business community that supports wasteful
transportation schemes that promise lucrative real estate
development opportunities but little congestion relief, of which
the Dulles rail extension proposal is a prime example.

As if there were not enough cooks already mucking around in the
region's congestion "broth," the Dulles rail project would expand
this exotic layering of bureaucratic confusion by placing
responsibility for financing, construction, and (possibly)
operation of the project in the hands of the Metropolitan
Washington Airports Authority (MWAA). As an independent public
authority with no experience in rail transit, the MWAA operates an
airport known for inconveniencing passengers trying to get from the
airport's perimeter to their flight. Perhaps it was for these
reasons that the U.S. DOT's Inspector General (IG) expressed
skepticism about MWAA's involvement. Making reference to Boston's
mismanagement of its infamous "Big Dig" tunnel project, the IG
noted, "These lessons are relevant in light of MWAA's lack of
experience in managing a mass transit project."[3]

Political Dynamics

Perhaps these factors were behind the concerns expressed by
James Simpson, Administrator of the U.S. Federal Transit
Administration, when he wrote Virginia Governor Tim Kaine in late
January 2008 to inform him that federal funding for the Dulles rail
project was in jeopardy. Specifically, Simpson noted that in its
current form the project would receive a "medium-low" rating,
essentially making it ineligible for up to $1.5 billion in federal
subsidies that Virginia was expecting for Phase 1 of the
project. Phase 1 would add the first 11.6 miles of new rail line,
extending west from Falls Church, VA, to Wiehle Avenue in
Reston, VA--several miles short of the airport. The
estimated cost of Phase 1 has risen from $1.52 billion in
December 2004 to $2.55 billion today.

To the extent that Mr. Simpson was influenced by the IG's
report, he is to be commended for recognizing that federal grants
are not meant for fulfilling the multi-modal dreams of regional
bureaucrats with little experience in surface transportation.
Instead, federal tax dollars should be directed at cost-effective
solutions to national and regional mobility problems. As the above
data show, the Dulles rail project would provide no meaningful
congestion relief to the Washington region in general or to
Northern Virginia in particular.

Nonetheless, most of the region's elected officials, including
its Washington congressional delegation, enthusiastically support
the project and are pressuring the Bush Administration to spend the
money anyway. This is understandable in the age of earmarks, when
"bringing home the bacon"--as opposed to providing meaningful
congestion relief--is increasingly seen as a core duty for a
region's elected officials. However, in an unusual twist to what is
otherwise a regional dispute, some members of the House leadership,
all from distant districts, have recently weighed in with their
support for the project despite its high costs and minuscule
benefits.[4]

Conclusion

Whatever the reasons for the leadership's involvement, and
however the project fares in its quest for taxpayer support, the
Dulles rail project has exposed the counterproductive political
process that surrounds the nation's transportation policymaking,
especially when Congress gets involved. For these reasons,
devolving the federal transportation program--and the
responsibility for funding it--back to the states should be a high
priority for the next Administration and Congress.

Wendell Cox and is a Visiting Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe
Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan
Senior Research Fellow, at The Heritage Foundation.

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